


Three is family

by Mary_from_Maryland



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic (in a way), Dark Past, Doubt, Established Relationship, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Running Away, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 08:51:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mary_from_Maryland/pseuds/Mary_from_Maryland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John’s mind raced, faceless paramilitary agents flashing before his eyes, grey suits dragging Harold away, gloved hands unplugging cables, confiscating his hardware… And then it hit him, from the lock on the grating doors downstairs to Bear’s unthreatening stance, from no signs of scuffle to be seen in the room to Harold’s clinging urgency the previous night.</p><p>Harold hadn’t been kidnapped. He’d left.</p><p> </p><p>Wherein Harold runs away, John and Grace come after him, and Harold's past does its best to get in the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three is family

“Good morning, Mr. Reese.”

John strode across the room and placed a mug of Sencha on the desk beside the keyboard with deliberate bad grace. Harold thanked him with an oblivious nod, without raising his eyes from the monitor.

" _Good morning_ , Finch."

Harold looked up, puzzled. "I already said - Something wrong?"

"Nothing serious", John drawled, casually brushing his fingertips against Harold's exceptionally bare forearm - it was a hell of a hot day.

Harold stopped typing.

"I was just wondering why you couldn’t sleep over at my place last night instead of dialing a cab at three in the morning ", John went on in a throaty voice, breathing against Harold's neck. "You hurt my feelings, you know." He playfully flicked his tongue at the lobe of Harold's ear. "I wouldn't have minded a morning quickie."

Harold snorted. "Mr. Reese, we are both perfectly aware of the jeopardy at which both our aliases would be put were the nature of our - encounters to be discovered. In any case", he added, ignoring Reese's chuckle, "I'm afraid we'll have to postpone our, ah, activities until later." He gestured to the monitor. "We have a new number."

#

John adjusted the focus of his military binoculars, barely noticing the stifling waves of heat which emanated from the concrete rooftop.

William Osborne, fifty-year-old paralegal from Providence, Rhode Island, was sitting on the bed of his poky hotel room in Chinatown, his portable computer on his lap, audibly enjoying what sounded unmistakably like a generous amount of online porn.

"Finch, are you listening?"

"Yes." To John's delight, there was a slight hint of embarrassment in Harold's voice.

"If this is your idea of a compensation for last night, I have to say I find it rather disappointing", he teased on.

"I would never be so naive as to underestimating your ability of finding alternative ways to pleasure without my assistance, Mr. Reese", Finch replied stiffly. "Besides", he added over the theatrical moans which were coming out of Osborne's laptop, "it didn't look to me as if you were in need of any  _compensation_ for last night." John could guess Harold's smile at the other end of the earpiece. "Actually, I was under the impression that you were quite satisfied with the outcome of the evening."

"Hm... Let me judge on that", John murmured, trying to keep up the offended charade in spite of his broadening grin.

"I'll be happy to do that as soon as we've guaranteed the security of our rather self-indulgent number", Harold replied in a deadpan tone. He was  _much_  better at pretending. "Speaking of whom, were you able to find out anything about his brother-in-law?"

"Not yet. Bluejacking Osborne's phone wasn't very useful. He hardly ever makes phone calls which aren't work-related, and he hasn't received a single SMS - except the one from his brother-in-law, which didn't contain any threat anyway, just small talk about some new football player of the Boston Patriots. I hoped  _you_  could tell me something more about this... Richard Lindal?"

"I could give you a detailed report of Mr. Lindal's last Sunday barbecue, but I'm afraid social networks don't have much to tell us about his relationship with our current number. Unlike his brother-in-law, Mr. Osborne has been uncharacteristically scrupulous in keeping his digital footprint as light as possible. The only thing I could find was an extremely protected Facebook account with a single blurry profile picture."

"Isn't that a suspicious behavior?"

"I would rather call it  _sensible_ , Mr. Reese."

John rolled his eyes. "Right. So you don't think he could be the perp?"

"What do you think?"

"It looks unlikely to me", John admitted. "This guy goes to bed at half past ten, wakes up at nine, goes for a walk, has lunch and jerks off in front of his laptop. He barely sets foot outside the hotel. I mean, he's staying in New York for a week and he isn't exactly making the most of his visit, but that's hardly a crime, right?"

"That's debatable", Harold said reproachfully, "but I do see your point." He paused. John could hear the faint sound of his typing. "I'm afraid the only thing you can do for tonight is keeping an eye on him."

"Will do", John said, sitting more comfortably against the rusty door through which he'd accessed the rooftop, then added, "Will you miss me?"

"I suppose so", Harold sighed. John grinned.

#

"Mr. Reese, are you awake?"

John emerged from the well of deep concentration he'd plunged into. "Of course I am awake, Finch. Who do you think you hired, a rent-a-cop?"

"Your breathing was unusually heavy."

John stretched his arms. "That doesn't mean I was sleeping, Harold. Any news?"

"Regrettably, yes. The last post on Mr. Lindal’s Facebook timeline has just divulged his intention of giving his brother-in-law a pleasant surprise by paying him a visit here in New York - today."

"The guy's coming all the way from Rhode Island to for a social call?"

 "Yes, it does sound a little over-the-top, doesn't it?"

"It does." John peered into his binoculars. Osborne was still asleep. "But it doesn't necessarily make him a threat."

Harold made a noncommittal noise, then a surprised sound. "Maybe not, but what about the fact that Mr. Lindal is, in this _very_  moment, purchasing a handgun?"

John sprang up. "I'm on it."

"Thank you, Mr. Reese. I'll go and pay Mr. Osborne a visit - I suppose it's better to get him out of that hotel room."

#

Richard Lindal was an idiot.

Glancing at the tense, sturdy man reflected in the rear-view mirror, John had to restrain himself from rolling his eyes at the series of clamorous errors the man had made - from practically framing himself on Facebook to buying a gun the  _same_ day on which he planned to use it - not to mention coming to New York by _bus_ instead of driving and getting into a private cab without even bothering to request the driver's identification.

"Where are we going, sir?" John asked, and nearly snorted when the man gave him the actual address of Osborne's hotel - he was too incautious to be  _true._

He looked pretty nervous, too: John saw him fiddling with his cheap watch as he discreetly inspected the man’s clothes at a traffic light, in search of the obvious swelling in his shirt or waistband. Strangely, the man had been sensible enough not to tuck the gun into his belt, probably opting for hiding it under what looked like an oversized leather coat instead. John arched an eyebrow in amusement. It was over thirty degrees outside.

"Would you like me to help you carry your luggage to your room, sir?" he offered with neutral politeness once Lindal had gotten out of the car, paid him and scrupulously counted the change.

The man threw him a distrustful look.

"What for?" he asked rudely. John was ridiculously taller than him. "D'you want a tip? Because you ain't gettin' one."

John cracked a smile. "Of course not, sir. I simply like to make sure that my clients are satisfied with the service. Besides, I wouldn't mind stretching my legs a bit."

"Oh... All right then", Lindal said, and John struggled not to gape. He hadn't expected the man to actually accept the offer.

He shouldered the relatively light  gym bag Lindal had brought with him, waited silently beside the reception counter as the man persuaded an impossibly bored-looking girl to point him towards Osborne's room - "Yes, I'm family... No, it's meant to be a surprise..." - and followed him to the second floor, their footsteps muffled by the seedy carpet.

Lindal stopped by Osborne's door, knocked, and waited, apparently oblivious to his driver's presence, looking more jumpy than ever. After a while, he knocked again, made and half-hearted attempt to a shout, and then - and then he reached into his coat.  _What the hell_ , John thought. What was he going to do, shoot at his brother-in-law through a locked door in front of a witness?

John dropped the bag and took a step towards Lindal, easily blocking his legs with his knee and twisting his arm behind his back, wrenching his - John frowned - wrenching his  _cell phone_ out of his hand.

"Hey, what the fuck d'you think you're doing?" Lindal shouted, pulling himself free. "What the fuck are you, some kind of mugger? Gimme my phone back or I swear I'll-"

John stared at him, flabbergasted.

"You're not - you don't - you bought a gun -"

"Now how in  _hell_ do you know that?"

John came to his senses.

"Detective Stills", he said coolly, flashing his badge in front of Lindal's face. "We've been keeping an eye on you. We received an anonymous tip."

That was pretty weak, but, thank God, Lindal bought it. He  _was_  a bit of an idiot, after all.

"Well then you got the wrong damn tip, detective", he spat. "My gun is in my nightstand drawer in my bedroom in  _Providence_ , together with my gun lice-"

His cell phone rang in John's hand.

"If you'll excuse me", Lindal said, snatching it from him. "Bill?" he said tentatively into the receiver, then he looked up.

"Is your first name John?" he asked, handing the phone back.

John stared at it. Something was  _terribly_   wrong.

"So let me guess", a sleepy voice began when he brought the phone to his ear. "Four-Eyes here is the brains, and you're the muscles?"

#

Everything else around John dimmed and blurred as his brain shifted into rescue mode. Suddenly, he wasn't thinking, he was not considering; his mind and body acted and assessed of their own accord, as if on autopilot. He breathed in, breathed out.

"What do you want?" he asked, his voice even.

"Well, it depends", William Osborne said slowly. His voice reminded John of paperwork and porn. "It depends on the kind of partnership we're looking at here." He seemed to be pacing around a room. "What exactly would you be willing to do to have your nerdy sidekick back?"

John opened his mouth to reply, then he heard a muffled "John, please, don't -", a thud, a yelp of pain.

Something snapped inside him.

"You do as much as breathe on him again", he said in a low voice, "and I swear to God, you will be whimpering and crawling at my feet, begging for your death, way before I'm finished with you." His tone darkened around swear, crawling and death.

Osborne made a heartless, slightly delayed attempt to a laugh.

"What do you want?" John repeated.

"All right, John", Osborne said, his tone a little harsher than before, "we can do this the easy way. You meet me in half an hour, bring along my brother-in-law, and I'll let you and your smart friend go free. No questions asked."

John looked up at Lindal as Osborne gave him an address and hung up.

"This wasn’t going to be a social call, was it?" he asked.

Lindal shook his head. "Not exactly."

"What's in the gym bag?"

"Nothin'", the man replied warily.

John rolled his eyes, picked up the bag, opened the zip. It was empty.

"Hey, didn't you hear me?"

"You'll explain on the way", John resolved, striding towards the elevator.

#

John pulled over on the left side of Bayard Street and looked at the front of number 83. A peeling door was crammed between a bio store and a Chinese herbs shop. A rusty fire escape wound its way into all of the upper floors.

"Hey, you're a cop, right?" Lindal asked abruptly from the back of the car, breaking the silence he'd obstinately been keeping for the last twenty minutes. For some reason, he hadn't gotten into the passenger seat, as if he still half believed John to be a cab driver.

John nodded once, without averting his eyes from the building.

"Well, then don't you think it's about time you called some backup?"

John glanced at the rearview mirror. "You know what, Richard", he said eventually, "I think you're right."

#

The staircase smelt of detergent, fried food and tea. John climbed the steps in silence, straining his ears, but he heard nothing apart from the steady hubbub of the street below and Lindal's footsteps behind him. He tightened the grip on his gun.

The third-floor corridor was deserted except for a young girl who was sweeping her doorstep, humming to herself. They walked past her, past the out of order sign on the elevator grating, past doors and more plywood doors, and then, abruptly, John stopped on his tracks. Lindal almost fell over him. "What the -" he began, but John raised a hand to forestall him and nodded towards the rose-pink 34 which was painted in childish calligraphy on the last door.

"We're here", he whispered, and pushed the door open, gun at ready.

The room was stuffy and almost totally dark, the only source of light being the jagged cracks in the battered roller shutter which covered the window, casting bright blades of sunlight into the dusty room. And in front of the window – John let out a gasp; he couldn’t help it – in front of the window stood William Osborne, holding a knife at Harold’s throat.

“Put the gun down”, the man commanded, and John dropped his gun before thinking, before even considering the alternatives. As if on autopilot, he thought wryly, cursing himself.

“Good”, Osborne said. He took a step sideways, keeping Harold’s body between him and John, and Harold’s face was suddenly illuminated by the seeping sunlight. John’s eyes scanned, registered: a bruise on Harold's temple, dried blood above his right eyebrow.

“Now put the other gun down and kick them both towards me, please”, Osborne drawled in a tone which sounded lazy and fierce at the same time.

Harold didn’t say a word; he simply looked at John, sadness and slight puzzlement on his face, and it was enough. John looked back; I can’t, he silently replied.

He reached into his coat, dropped his Glock 17 to the floor and kicked both of the weapons towards the window.

“That’s better”, Osborne said, quickly leaning down to pick them up. He leveled the Glock with Harold’s temple, the Sig Sauer with John’s chest. “Now let’s get to business, shall we?”

"Bill, you don't have to-" Lindal attempted.

"Oh, shut up, Richard", Osborne snapped. "You know, I've been wondering about you, John", he added thoughtfully. "I choose the seediest, the most anonymous hotel in New York City, and there he is, a man in a smart suit spying on me from the opposite rooftop. You force-paired my phone as well, didn't you?"

John kept silent.

"Well, I hope you enjoyed the show", Osborne jeered in a slightly bored tone. "Anyway, I was wondering about how to get rid of you before Richard arrived - people tend to cling to their privacy when they're planning to kill a man - when-"

"Why did you want to kill Lindal?" John interrupted. The man behind him had hissed a surprised "I knew it, you bastard".

"Because he was blackmailing me, John", Osborne replied irritably. "He wanted five thousand dollars for keeping his mouth shut about some domestic problems I was having with that bitch of my wife."

John turned towards Lindal in disgust, remembering the empty bag, his guilty attitude. "You were willing to cover domestic violence on your sister in exchange for money?"

The man stared at his feet. "I've a hell of a mortgage to pay", he muttered uneasily. "Had to sell my car to pay off the last installment. Won’t be long before they come knocking at my door. Mind you, I've always tried to talk Libby into leaving the damn man", he added as an apology.

"Oh, she’ll never do that", Osborne said calmly. "But that's hardly the point. As I was saying, I was wondering about the best way of getting rid of you when this one" - he nodded towards Harold - "turns up and offers to find me another hotel room, gibbering about a 'Mr. Lindal' buying a gun and coming all the way from Rhode Island to kill me." 

"I should've done that", Lindal growled. Osborne looked delighted.

"You bought a gun, Richie?" he said in mock surprise. "You were afraid I could be having second thoughts about our agreement, weren't you? Telling the world you were coming to visit me with that Facebook post was clever of you, but a gun?" He sniggered. "Where is it, by the way?"

"I left it at home. Changed my mind. Was obviously wrong."

Osborne looked at him. A gleam in his eyes made the back of John's head tingle with renewed wariness.

"You were indeed, Richard", Osborne said. "Tragically wrong. As were you, John, and you, Harold" - he lingered with malevolence on the name - "for thinking I was the one who needed protection." He hit Harold’s shoulder with the butt of the gun, shoving him to his knees.

"Now I'm going to shoot the three of you", he said slowly. John rapidly evaluated the time it would take him to run across the room, tackle the man and disarm him.

"I'm going to kill you, Richard, for being an obnoxious, worthless wretch, and you, John, for getting in the damn way when no one had asked you to." He looked down at Harold, who was shivering slightly, his head bent. John steeled himself. "And I'm going to kill you-"

The faint sound of police sirens reached them through the window. Osborne raised his head. "Oh, fuck!" John lunged at him, grabbed his shoulder and dislocated it, sending the first gun to the opposite side of the room. Osborne cried out in pain, dropping the other one. John kicked him in the back and raised the gun to smash it against the man’s head, but Osborne unexpectedly rolled over and stabbed John's thigh with his knife, the blade sinking deep into John's flesh. John let out a groan and lost his grip for a moment - enough for Osborne to leap to the window, bang the shutter open and disappear down the fire escape.

 #

“John, are you really sure you don’t want me to call an ambulance?”

“I’m sure. I’m all right. Please…” John stood up and shifted his weight to his uninjured leg, barely disguising a wince. “Let me go home.”

Carter hesitated, drew a sigh. “All right, you can go. Just – keep in touch, ok?”

“Will do. Thank you.”

#

They sat in the car for a while in silence. Harold looked outside. John looked at Harold.

“My place or yours?” he attempted eventually. A thin smile appeared on Harold’s lips, which was what John had hoped.

“My place”, he concluded, and turned the ignition on.

#

“Harold.” John grabbed Harold by his arm before he could enter his apartment. “You can keep silent if you want. Just look at me. Just tell me you’re OK.”

“I – I’m fine”, Harold said, struggling to keep his voice even. He was shaking. John stepped over the threshold and held him, closing the door behind them. Harold smelt like sweat and antiseptic. John took a deep breath as Harold pressed his face against his chest and sobbed quietly, gradually calming down. They were safe. They were home.

“I’m fine”, Harold repeated after a while, a little more steadily. “Albeit tired.”

John smiled and pressed a soft kiss on Harold’s forehead. “Shower. Lunch. Rest”, he ordered, gently ushering Harold towards the bathroom.

He limped around the kitchen and managed to de-frost some soup and a tomato salad while Harold was showering. They ate in silence, then Harold cleared the table and did the dishes while John cautiously re-examined his wound. He was lucky the man hadn’t severed his femoral artery.

“Do you want to talk about it?” John asked when Harold turned off the tap.

Harold shook his head, his back to John. “Not really.”

A sudden suspicion went through John’s head. Could Harold be hiding something from him?

“He didn’t – do anything to you, did he?”

Harold turned around and shook his head again. “No. Apart from hitting me and kidnapping me”, he added, almost as an afterthought. “It’s just…” he hobbled to his chair and sat down with a grimace.

“Tell me”, John urged, reaching out to run his finger over Harold’s temple. The cut above his eyebrow had been disinfected and stitched up.

Harold paused. “I’m just glad I’m here”, he murmured eventually. John smiled and leaned down to kiss him, the muscles of his back relaxing under Harold’s touch.

 “So what about staying for the night?”

#

Until midday, John thought there wasn’t any more to it than Finch being quite a dick.

He’d woken up to a dull throb in his leg and a faint smell of aftershave on his pillow. He’d rubbed his eyes and rolled over with a dazzled smile, only to find the other side of the bed empty and unruffled, the neatly tucked bedspread looking as if no one had ever slept beneath it.

Damn it, Harold, John thought angrily as he picked his jeans up from the living room floor – they’d been so urgent, so desperate; they hadn’t even made it to the bedroom the first time. His mind went back to Harold’s skin, his hot breath against John’s inner thighs, his throat bare under John’s lips. He remembered grabbing fistfuls of the blanket, gasping, thrusting into Harold’s mouth; stroking Harold’s hair in the stunned haze of the afterglow, both of them too spent to turn Letterman off.

John flung himself onto the sofa and cried out in pain immediately after, cursing his injured leg. Thinking about the previous night had managed to piss him off even more.

He could live with Harold’s concern about privacy; he could put up with his measures and precautions; he wouldn’t go beyond some teasing and a shrug even on the several occasions when the line between ‘caution’ and ‘paranoia’ was manifestly crossed. His years in the CIA had imprinted on him all too well the remarkably close connection between survival and secretiveness, and he couldn’t really blame Finch for caring for his life more than he cared for his own.

This time, however, John suspected there was something more to it than John Rooney and Harold Crane’s good name and reputation.

He walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, trying to drown his mind into the teeming crowd of unconscious passers-by – every one of them a possible victim, a potential threat. Why wouldn’t Harold fall asleep with him? Was it force of habit, embarrassment, or distrust? Was there a limit, a boundary line Harold didn’t want to see crossed? Or had he simply weighed the nature of their relationship, concluding John wasn’t worth more than a few hours of frenzied intimacy and a half-remembered kiss goodnight in the early morning?

John’s jaw worked as the pain in his leg increased, anger lapping at him like a black surging wave, a self-despising threat. He clenched his fists, his mind running to the bottle of whisky hidden behind the ironing board in the storage closet, and then he remembered Harold’s faltering smile, the fear in his eyes, the catch in his voice when he’d looked up and told him he was fine.

He breathed out, ashamed of himself. Harold had been kidnapped twenty-four hours before and John had spent the last one wondering resentfully at the little consideration he had showed towards his partner’s precarious self-esteem. He thought of the sleepless nights he’d spent after every abduction, every rescue, every torture; he recalled staring at the ceiling of some sordid motel room, Kara’s naked body next to him; willing himself not to shove her soothing hands aside, shaking, craving to be alone. The animal need of a lonely dark hole where to lick his wounds, to fall apart and pull himself together.

He dialed Harold’s number and waited, but the phone rang unanswered until his call went to voicemail. He hung up with a sigh. He would check on him later.

#

By six in the afternoon, John started to worry.

There was something wrong in Finch’s behavior. Taking his time to recover was one thing; not answering John’s calls for the whole afternoon was another.

A heavy padlock was hanging from the grating doors when John got to the library. He sighed. He knew Finch was far more likely to spend that time in one of his safe houses; then again, it wouldn’t have been the first time his reclusiveness got to the extent of locking himself into the library.  John pulled a fountain pen out of his pocket and picked the padlock.

The lights were off on the second floor. John cautiously approached the workspace, and swore aloud when a blurry shape ran directly into his legs and almost made him fall forward.

“Bear!” he hissed, pressing his hands against his thigh.

This was strange. Why would Finch leave Bear there instead of taking him with him? In spite of all his fastidious protestations about fang marks on twelfth-century codices and unhygienic footprints on the bathroom tiles, John knew his employer was too fond of the dog to lock him into the library, unless…

Unless he had expected John to come and look for him.

John frowned, blood still pounding in his wound. His eyes were gradually adjusting to the darkness. He cut Bear’s welcoming yelps short with a sharp word, straightened up, leaning against Finch’s round desk for support, and – his heart leapt into his throat.

Finch’s desk. Empty.

John limped to the door and turned the lights on, then turned around and looked again. He hadn’t been wrong. Monitors, keyboards, Harold’s precarious pile of books – everything was gone, down to the crammed steel pen holder, the two pairs of headsets, the black shiny mouse-mats.

Harold was gone, too.

John’s mind raced, faceless paramilitary agents flashing before his eyes, grey suits dragging Harold away, gloved hands unplugging cables, confiscating his hardware… And then it hit him, from the lock on the grating doors downstairs to Bear’s unthreatening stance, from no signs of scuffle to be seen in the room to Harold’s clinging urgency the previous night.

Harold hadn’t been kidnapped. He’d left.

#

“Still no luck with the chase.”

Detective Fusco sat down at his desk with a contented sigh and extracted a folder from one of his cluttered drawers.

“We got in touch with the Providence PD. Turned out ‘Osborne’ was a fake. Can’t remember the real name, it’s got something to do with a tree…” he leafed through the folder. “The blackmailing guy swears he doesn’t know anything about where is brother-in-law might be going, which is probably true, because, I mean, they weren’t exactly buddy-buddy, right?”

“No”, John said absent-mindedly. He was barely listening.

“John”, Carter said softly, leaning forward from her chair, “you could report him as missing.” She wasn’t talking about Osborne. “We could help you look for him.”

“No”, John told the ceiling. There was a tight knot in his throat.

Carter looked at him for a moment, then handed him a small plastic bag.

“We couldn’t find any fingerprints on it. No logos, no distinctive features whatsoever. It looks rather old, but I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.”

John ripped the seal open, extracting the object he’d found under Harold’s desk. A small, empty fountain pen case, buried beneath paper and teabags in the rubbish bin. He ran his thumb over the fern-green fabric of its inside. Look for me, it didn’t say.

“Listen, I don’t know how much he’d told you about his past, but if you want to find out where he’s going you’ll probably have to dig into it a little more”, Carter said, then added “I’m not offering my help with that” when John started shaking his head again. “I know you don’t want to compromise his privacy. I’m just saying, is there anyone you know of who knew him before you did? Someone who could tell you something more about that pen case?”

John looked up.

“There is someone.”

#

John sat on a bench amid the weary rustle of leaves and the shrieking laughter of children playing. Even though the sun had set, the heat was still mind-darkening, forbidding; it reminded John of a dusty dirt patch, a blinding whirlwind of sun and pneumatics long before.

Garibaldi’s statue was staring blankly at the rows of plane trees behind him from its rock pedestal, a mix of fear and perseverance on the general’s face, one bronze hand on the hilt of his sword, ready to unsheathe. John glanced at it and randomly thought of hissing bullets and clashing horses, black nostrils flaring in fright and excitement.

He ran a hand over his face, went through his scribbled notes for the third time, pocketed them and stood up, careful to place his weight on his uninjured leg.

I have absolutely no right of doing this, he thought again as he approached the north-eastern exit of Washington Square Park.

He crossed the street and decided that after all he wasn’t going to see this through. He turned left, fiddling with the empty  fountain pen case in his pocket; he stopped in front of Apartment 2, hesitated and then started to climb the granite steps, telling himself he was making a very, very big mistake all the way to the front door.

 He raised his hand to ring the bell, dropped it, raised it again.

“Oh, hell. You asked for it, Finch”, he muttered under his breath.

A slim woman peered through the latched door a few seconds after the bell had chimed. Her dark auburn hair stood against her petrol blue t-shirt.

“The… The Detective?” she said after a while, slight puzzlement in her tone as she unbolted the door.

“Sorry for the late hour, Grace”, John began. She smiled an instinctive wary smile at the mention of her name.  “I need to talk to you.”

#

“I’m sorry” Grace said, rising from the floor with a small heap of shattered china in her hand. “I didn’t think this kind of things happened outside of movies.” 

“What kind of things? Finding out your dead fiancé hasn’t actually died or dropping teacups to the floor in shock?” John asked in a weak attempt to humor. Grace let out a shaky laugh.

“Both, I guess”, she considered after a moment, sitting down again. She fell silent, her head in her hands; a single tear slid out of her closed eyelids. John looked at the slight frown on her face and thought of her slender fingers running over the borders of the photo frame after he’d handed it back, as if smoothing out invisible creases. I lost him two years ago.

“Why?” she murmured. There was something remote in her expression; something wild stirring behind it.

John glanced around uneasily before replying. A draft on an easel was standing in a corner; ivy leaves and shoots curling and coiling, tangling here and there in tight knots. Probably the cover for another number of The Boroughs.

“I’m fairly sure Harold will never forgive me for what I’ve just done, but I knowhe would kill me if I took the chance of explaining the whole thing for himself from him”, he said at last.

“Then why?” she asked again, her voice rippling with anger. “If he didn’t want you to, why have you come? And if it’s you instead of him who’s come, how do you figure he will get the chance of explaining the whole thing for himself?”

John sighed and reached into his pocket.

“Harold has left”, he said simply, leaning forward to give her the pen case. She took it and raised her eyebrows, looking from John to the case to John. “I see”, she said, nodding, and it was as if she’d really realized something.

“That’s the only thing he left behind. I was hoping you could tell me something about it.”

“I see”, she repeated, and then, “I’m coming with you.”

“I – I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“With all due respect, John, I’m not really asking for your permission”, she said kindly, and that was it, becauseJohn wasn’t really in a position to discuss priorities and rights.

“What about that pen case?” he asked, wondering at the surge of relief he felt where worry and irritation should have been.

Even if it was a bitter smile, it brightened her features. “We used to argue about it”, she said. “It came in the mail one day, together with an expensive-looking envelope addressed to a Harold Wren. I thought there had been some kind of mistake, because of course his real surname wa - is Partridge, but when I gave it to him he got really anxious and he wouldn’t tell me anything about it.” She shook her head, lost in thought. “He was like that, sometimes. I didn’t know he’d kept it.”

“Did you open the envelope?”

“No, I didn’t. Neither did he, not in front of me, at least.”

“Do you remember how it looked like? Was there anything written on it? Some initials, a logo?”

Grace frowned in concentration. “It was three years ago… As I told you, the paper looked quite expensive, and – yes, I think there was a purplish symbol on a corner of it, some kind of logo, probably.”

“Could you draw it?” John began, but Grace had already pulled a notebook and a pencil towards her. She paused for a moment and then sketched something on it.

“It looks like a stag”, John said when she tore the paper and passed it to him.

“Yeah, well, it is a stag”, she said with a teasing smirk. “Does it tell you anything?”

“Not really, but soon it will.” He took his phone out of his pocket, took a photo of the drawing, opened Google Images, uploaded the picture and clicked on Search by image. Grace looked curiously over his shoulder as the cursor turned into an hourglass.

“Got you”, John said when the loading completed. Best guess for this image: hartford insurance logo, Google informed him from the top of the page. “You’ve got very good memory”, he added as he scanned The Hartford Financial Services Wikipedia page. Grace looked mildly pleased.

“So I guess we know where to begin.”

#

He picked her up at ten o’clock the following morning. She locked the door, ran down the steps and opened the back door to drop her small bag on the seat. She was wearing a cotton olive top over dark blue jeans: both practical and stylish, just enough not to attract unwanted attention, John noticed approvingly. He caught a faint whiff of perfume as she got into the passenger seat next to him.

She was quiet for a while. John drove in silence, stealing furtive glances at her every now and then. He felt slightly sick from lack of sleep, and there was a foul taste in his mouth. He’d stayed up all night, watching old cop movies until the small hours of the morning, a bowl of cereal in his lap, fighting the urge to drink himself to sleep. He’d mouthed Humphrey Bogart’s lines in The Maltese Falcon, made fun of Orson Welles’s imbecility in Touch of Evil, and his eyes had stung disconcertingly as he suddenly realized he missed Harold’s pungent remarks about the ‘cultural level’ of his ‘diversions’, the clatter of steel against ceramic as he stirred his green tea, the light of John’s bedside lamp seeping from under the door as Harold leafed through one of his classics, claiming that he would soon be fast asleep unless John had the grace to come to bed and give his guest some distraction.

Just before dawn, he’d gone for a run in Columbus Park and met a disgruntled Leon an hour later to hand Bear over. Back home, he’d called The Hartford investor relations number, introducing himself as John Rooney, and managed with no particular problems to secure a brief appointment with a Mr. McMurphy.

The dull, steady pain in the back of his eyes had followed him all the way to Washington Square, but Grace’s quiet presence in the passenger seat next to him seemed to ease it a little.

“How are you feeling?” he asked as he turned right into West Street, suddenly eager to break the silence.

She flashed the same shy, uncalculated smile she’d smiled when he’d said her name the night before.

“Would you think it childish of me if I told you I’m excited?” she asked.

John smiled in turn as the tightness in his throat liquefied away. “Probably not.”

#

Burning deserted parking lots stretched on both their sides as they exited the highway. John pulled over, rolling the windows up. They caught a glimpse of a three-story mansion, blazing windows against old-pink plaster, as they got out of the car, catching their breath under the merciless sun.

“Wait in the garden over there. I’ll be back in half an hour”, John told Grace when she started to follow him, and luckily she didn’t have any objections. He watched her walk away towards the worn out patch of green in front of the villa, her hands in her pockets. Strangely, her hair looked darker in the sunlight.

“Good morning”, the young black girl at reception uttered in unconcealed admiration as John approached the counter.

“Good morning to you”, he replied, raising a charming smile which didn’t reach his eyes. “John Rooney. I’m here to see Mr. McMurphy?”

The girl skimmed through her notes, then nodded. “Ah, yes, here you are. First floor, second door on the right. Elevator’s that way.” She pointed behind her shoulders with her thumb, without averting her eyes from John.

John followed her direction and got in the elevator together with four disoriented youths who messed with the keyboard and managed to get to the top of the building before allowing him to press the first floor button. When he’d finally gotten rid of them, John walked out of the elevator into a sober corridor.

A smart man in his early sixties let him in when he knocked on the fake wood door.

“How do you do?” he greeted him, pompously stretching a hand, which John shook. There was something tastefully manipulative in McMurphy’s eyes.

“So, Mr. Rooney”, McMurphy said, gesturing to a chair after John had given him his business card, “to what do I owe the pleasure?” The words Brian McMurphy - Public Relations where engraved on a brass sign on his desk.

“Thank you for meeting me on such short notice, Mr. McMurphy. I don’t expect to take much of your time”, John said, automatically shifting into formal mode. He hoped the man wouldn’t notice the dark circles under his eyes. “I’m here to ask you a few questions about a former employee of yours.”

“You’re not from the press, are you?” McMurphy asked, biting his nail.

“I’m not. The employee I’m interested in has applied for a post of sales management at the company I work for, and we’re looking into his past work experience. The usual procedure.”

“Who are we talking about?”

“Mr. Harold Wren.”

McMurphy’s eyes widened, narrowed. “And they’ve sent you all the way from New York to ask about a man who worked here about thirty years ago?”

John gave a little shrug. “We like to be thorough”, he said noncommittally. “You remember Mr. Wren, then?”

“I do”, McMurphy admitted slowly. “Yes, I remember him. Mind you, he only worked with us for a year. The fastest career climb I’ve ever seen. When he got here he looked like one of those frightened kids who’ve spent their college years hiding from girls and aggressive quarterbacks, but by the time he left he was probably earning more than I was at the time.” He laughed a mirthless laugh. “A hell of a brain.”

“When did he leave?” John asked, making rapid calculations in his mind.

“1983”, McMurphy replied curtly, confirming John’s thoughts. “Funny you should come and ask about Wren now. I was just thinking of contacting him.”

“May I ask you for what purpose?”

The man snorted. “You haven’t seen the bunch of new recruits downstairs, have you?”

John remembered the kids in the elevator. “I think I met some of them.”

“Well, they’re the reason why I was thinking of contacting your Mr. Wren. We’re looking for a new staff trainer – a former employee with enough experience and communication skills to take care of that gang of clueless nerds. Of course Wren isn’t the obvious choice, seeing that he worked only here for a year, but then, I’ve always had a feeling he would be perfect for the job. Anyway, don’t worry”, he added, mistaking the frown which had passed over John’s face. “I don’t think he’s going to choose us over you. I mean, we made him the same offer three years ago, when he was working as an underwriter for that New York company – talk about wasting talent –, and he didn’t deign to send a ‘no, thank you’ back.”

“You contacted him in New York?”

“Yeah, we sent him the job offer, fountain pen and acknowledgements and all. He never answered.”

“How did you track him down?”

McMurphy looked up, as if wondering whether he’d talked too much. “How is that relevant to your company?” he asked warily.

“It isn’t”, John admitted placidly. “I asked out of curiosity.”

 “You’re not the only ones who like to be thorough.” McMurphy smirked. “Even though Wren was a bit of a secretive person. I’m still wondering how he managed to keep his encounters with that stunning girl private most of the time.”

“What girl?” John asked in spite of himself, but McMurphy didn’t seem bothered by the inappropriate inquisitiveness. John suspected he was enjoying himself.

“Now let me see… Sylvaine Morley-Jones, wasn’t that her name?”

“Syl- Sylvaine Morley-Jones?”

“Yes sir”, McMurphy nodded solemnly, delighted. “They were pretty close. I heard she’s become an actress, hasn’t she?”

#

They had lunch in a cheap diner next to the gas station in West Hartford. Grace’s lips thinned when John told her about McMurphy’s mention of Harold’s encounters with ‘that stunning girl’.

“So I guess she’s our next stop”, she said.

John nodded. “She might be able to tell us something about Harold’s life before he came to Hartford. I’ll research her address later.”

“No need. She spends her summers in Milton, Massachusetts”, Grace said. “I used to be a fan of hers”, she added wryly in response to John’s interrogative look. “I was a teenager when she started her career.”

“She can’t have been older than eighteen or nineteen at the time of their – in 1983”, John considered thoughtfully. “Harold moved here almost immediately after graduating at MIT, and only a year later he came to New York to found – to work for Universal Heritage.” He suspected Grace wasn’t abreast of Harold’s involvement with Ingram’s IFT.  “I wonder why.”

Grace took a sip of her beer. “It looks like you know more about him than I do”, she murmured. John kept silent. “He used to tell me that the past didn’t matter”, she went on. “Every time I tried to insist about it. He would disappear for an afternoon and turn up again in the evening with a ticket to the opera or a reservation at the Essex House. One day I got so angry I threw him out, and he had an original De Chirico delivered to my house the following morning.” A smile made its way on her face as she remembered, and John thought he’d never met a woman so uncontrived, so eager to expose herself. “Of course I never knew where in hell he got the money, but still, in those moments I would believe him.” She looked up to John, slowly shaking her head. “I would believe the past really didn’t matter.”

 They finished their sirloin steaks and salad, shared another beer, and then John paid for both of them at the counter while Grace went to the ladies’ room.

He stood in the shade under the blue feathered umbrellas outside the diner, waiting for Grace to come out. None of the plastic tables in the terrace were occupied; the few customers had more wisely taken shelter in the small air-conditioned lounge.

After a few minutes, he walked in again, circumventing the counter to get to the restrooms. He stopped by the ladies’ door, knocking once. “Grace?” he asked tentatively.

A muffled cry reached him through the door.

He stormed in, his fists clenching. A filthy-looking man had pinned Grace against the tiled wall – a hand clasped to her mouth, a knee blocking her legs – and was burying his face in her neck, grunting loudly.

John barely noticed the increasing amount of blood streaking his sleeves until Grace crouched beside him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Stop it, John”, she pleaded, her voice a little shaky. “Please, let’s just go.”

He walked beside her to the car, his bloodied hands hidden in his pockets. The wound in his thigh was throbbing again.

 “Are you all right?” he asked as she fastened her seatbelt.

She nodded slowly. “Thank you.”

#

Grace focused on steadying her breath for the next few minutes; John wanted to reach out and hold her, but he drove on silently instead, his eyes on the road, thinking of Harold treating her to expensive  restaurants, taking her to the opera. Harold buying her ten million dollar paintings to make her forgive him. Harold indulging John’s flirting through the earpiece, trying to conceal his worry every time John was caught in a brawl. Harold trailing his lips from John’s eyes to the corner of his mouth before sneaking out of bed in the wee hours.

“Who are you?” Grace asked calmly. A flock of egrets soared from the marshes on their right, throwing hoarse calls as it flew over the highway.

John considered for a moment before replying, “I used to be a soldier.”

“And then what happened?”

A sharp pang went through John’s thigh as he pressed the clutch pedal. “I came back”, he said. “Late.”

She seemed to ponder in turn before saying, “Tell me how you met him.”

John cracked his sore knuckles. “I was trying to drink myself to death”, he said, and the crudeness of it what somewhat mitigated by her silence. “He came out of nowhere and gave me a job. I wasn’t late anymore.” His stomach clenched. “He saved my life.”

She smiled sadly. “That’s just like him.”

#

Grace let out a low whistle as they approached number 101, Milton Street, which most fan sites gave as the address of Sylvaine Morley-Jones’s summer residence. She’d been quiet since they’d entered Neponset Valley, looking out the window at the rows of trimmed gardens and CCTV-guarded fences parading on their left. John pulled over behind a gray sedan with smoked glass windows. A young man crouched behind the lifted hood as they got out of the car, placing a professional camera on a telescopic easel and pointing it towards the entrance. John didn’t envy him; the air fluttered and quivered above the steaming engine.

A bulky security guard in earpieces strode over to meet them at the gate. John scanned his clothes and relaxed, shifting into civilian mode: the man was unarmed except for a small truncheon hanging from his belt.

“You can’t stay here, folks”, he warned them in a world-weary tone. John could hear the faint click click click of the camera behind them. The back of his neck tickled uncomfortably.

“I’m sorry, I was just wondering”, he began naively, “is this Sylvaine Morley-Jones’s place?”

“You can’t stay here”, the guard repeated.

“Listen, my friend is a huge fan of hers”, John nodded towards Grace, who smiled candidly. “Do you think there’s any chance she could let us in for a sec? Just for a handshake?”

The man seemed mildly amused. “No chance”, he replied flatly. He glanced towards the pap’s car. “I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

“Oh, but please, we’ve come all the way from Worcester…” John pleaded, and made a deliberately lame attempt to climb over the gate. The guard grabbed his forearm and pushed him back, at the same time giving his earpiece a light tap. John had a peculiar sense of déjà-vu. He was contemplating the altogether unappealing option of simply knocking the man out when a slightly hoarse female voice made the guard’s head jerk back.

“What’s the matter, Ronnie?”

 A tall bony woman was approaching them, a hand raised to her face to shield her eyes from the sun. She was wearing a pair of really short white shorts and a yellow tulle top which left uncovered her stomach and navel. John glimpsed the straps of a blue two-piece swimsuit fastened behind her pale neck. Her feet were bare in the grass. The camera behind them went into a frenzy of shots.

“Everything’s under control, ma’am”, the guard said, stepping into the pap’s trajectory.

“My friend is a great fan of yours”, John explained doggedly.

Sylvaine Morley-Jones turned towards Grace, whose ingenuous smile had left the place to undisguised awe.

“Happy to hear that”, she said, not unkindly. “It was nice to meet you.” Ronnie gave a distinct sigh of relief as she turned her back and started to walk away.

“Wait-” John called, but Grace placed a hand on his elbow to stop him and said, “We’re old friends of Harold’s.”

The woman stopped on her tracks and turned around, her thin lips parted in surprise. Ronnie tensed again.

“Harold – Harold Wren?” she asked incredulously, the slightest hint of a French accent lingering in her speech. Grace and John nodded simultaneously. “Good Lord. Why didn’t you just say so?”

#

They were let in and escorted along the tree-lined path by another scowling security guard. John saw Ronnie closing the gate behind them with the corner of his eye. Sylvaine Morley-Jones walked in front of them, balancing herself on the grassy edge of the path in order to avoid – John assumed – scorching her bare soles on the scalding tarmac.

She led them around the house to a wide rear swimming pool which, at least, gave reason for her attire. Grace raised her eyebrows at John in amusement when the actress gestured to a pair of wooden deckchairs and ordered “Three Margarita on the Rocks, Frank dear” to the guard. John caught a glimpse of a basketball court in the farthest corner of the garden as he sat down under the thatched gazebo. A vegetal fence separated them from the neighboring villa, where, judging from the sounds, a swimming pool party was taking place.

“So you’re a fan of mine”, Morley-Jones said when the drinks had arrived. John took a sip from his stemmed glass, trying not to think of the last time he’d drunk tequila.

“Absolutely”, Grace confirmed. “I’ve been following you since the very beginning.”

Morley-Jones tilted her head. “How do you know Harold?” she asked, stirring her Margarita with a straw.

“We work together”, John said. “It was he who introduced me to Grace. They’re childhood friends”, he ventured, hoping Grace would keep up the role. Morley-Jones looked from him to Grace with narrowed eyes, probably trying to assess the nature of their relationship. John knew he should have introduced Grace as his girlfriend – it would have looked far more natural; he’d done it countless times with Kara – but, at the last moment, something had stopped him.

“How’s he doing?” the woman asked, averting her eyes from Grace’s bare ring finger.

“He’s doing great”, John said. “He got engaged”, Grace added.

“Did he?” Morley-Jones raised her eyebrows. “You know, I never heard from him again after he left. God, it’s been, what, thirty years?” She shook her head.

“Harold’s always told me you were very close”, Grace said. John noticed a slight tightness in her voice.

“I don’t know about that.” The woman took a thoughtful sip of her drink.

“How is it that the two of you met?” John asked politely.

“By chance, actually.” She shook her head again, her eyes on the shimmering water, and John understood why people were so crazy about her. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful; the dark circles under her eyes were a little too pronounced, her skin was a little too pale, and her leanness verged on angular, but there was something mesmerizing about her, a contradictory, effortless sense of style.

“I was a bit of a mess back then”, Morley-Jones went on. “I lived in a rented two-room apartment with my mother in Hartford, still without a clue about all this.” She made a gesture which encompassed Frank the security guard standing at the edge of the swimming pool, the small pruned trees encircling the basketball court, the loud techno music which reached them through the vegetal fence. “My father had already left us; I’d dropped out of college…” She paused. “Anyway, there was this minor accident involving my mother’s car, and I had to go with her to the insurance company, because she barely spoke English at the time. We walked into the office and there he was, this young, unusually smart employee who smiled to me when I started translating and addressed my mother in perfect French.” She put down her glass with a sigh and lighted a cigarette. “I fell for him. I really did. We started seeing each other – I would drop by at The Hartford, bringing along some random paperwork for his colleagues’ benefit, and most of the times that was that, some small talk and hurried sex in the copy room.” She smirked. “I know it sounds like low-end pornography, but it was all I got in the beginning – not that I complained.  Anyway, a few months later he got some kind of promotion, and we started dating properly. He would take me to the restaurant, we’d go to the movies together, that kind of things, you know.” John glanced sideways at Grace. There was a pained expression on her face. Morley-Jones didn’t seem to notice. “And then he left”, she concluded flatly.

“Just like that?” John asked.

“Just like that”, she shrugged. “Never heard from or of him again. He wasn’t very good with words, you know. I mean”, she corrected herself, “he could be damn articulate if he wanted to, but conversation wasn’t exactly the main element of our relationship.” She put out the cigarette butt in a ceramic ashtray. “Although, as I told you, I couldn’t complain. He was six years older than me, but oh, God, you can’t imagine what he managed to do with his fingers.” She closed her eyes for a moment. Both Grace and John shifted uncomfortably in their deckchairs.

Morley-Jones opened her eyes and looked at them as if she’d forgotten they were there. “You know what, I think I even kept a photo of him”, she said. “Come with me.”

They followed her through a back door into a spacious but relatively spare lounge. Chinese paper floor lamps cast suffused light on dark brown armchairs. A marble yin and yang coffee table stood against the cream-colored carpet in the center of the room.

Morley-Jones walked into an adjacent room, reappearing a few moments later with a battered-looking notebook in her hands. She leafed through it, turning pages which were heavy with brightly-colored post-its and magazine scraps. “There we are”, she said softly after a while, handing Grace the notebook.

If Sylvaine Morley-Jones was still more than attractive in her late forties, she’d been disturbingly beautiful at eighteen. John’s eyes lingered on her bare chest, her black nipples standing against her white small breasts, the upper part of her hollow groin left visible by a pair of plain bikini slips. And standing beside her, their fingers intertwined, was Harold, a youthful, almost untroubled smile in his eyes. Jennings Beach, July 5th, 1982, someone had written above the photo in fancy writing.

The actress sighed. “He’d driven me to Bridgeport for my birthday. We had to sneak out of town in the early morning. My mother bought it when I told her I’d spent the day with friends, but that woman was really horrible to him when we came back. She used to cuddle him, as if he was thirteen years old or something.”

“That woman?” Grace asked. “Another – another girlfriend?”

 “What?” Morley-Jones looked up and burst out laughing. “Oh, no”, she said. “Ms. Scott was in her forties at the time. His landlady. A mean, frustrated spinster, if you ask me. She lived with her brother, who was even worse than her, if possible. I heard they moved to Fall River a few months before my first audition.”

 #

Grace glanced back repeatedly as Frank escorted them to the gate. Ronnie gave them an acknowledging nod and they walked out into the street. The gray sedan had disappeared.

“I wonder how Harold could like me after being with her”, Grace murmured.

“I don’t”, John replied earnestly, and she beamed at him.

#

Abigail and Humphrey Scott shared a small apartment in downtown Fall River. The front of the building, which had probably been white in the beginning, had taken on a slate-gray hue after years of exposure to atmospheric agents and exhaust gases.

As soon as John had pulled the handbrake, Grace got out of the car and walked towards the entrance. She shook her head as he joined her in the modest doorway.

“I think they’re not at home”, she said disconsolately, raising her hand to the door phone to press the button again. No one answered. They looked at each other. John was about to suggest warning the janitor – according to what he’d learnt, at least one of the Scotts was forced at home by his heart condition – when a voice behind them made them both spin around.

“You’re not gonna get anywhere if you keep pressing that button, dear.” A corpulent but energetic-looking elderly woman was grinning at Grace from the other end of the doorway. She was carrying one chock-full grocery store bag for either side. “He’s deaf as a post”, she explained. She took in John’s appearance for a moment. “So, are you or are you not gonna help me with these bags?”

#

“You’ll have to be quick”, Ms. Scott warned them, setting a silvery tea-tray on the coffee table. “Humphrey’s nurse is coming back at six, and it will be cramped enough in here without you.”

Her brother grabbed her by her wrist as she walked past his wheelchair towards the kitchen. “Are they from the hospital?” he asked in a perfectly audible whisper when she’d leaned forward. “No, they’re not”, Ms. Scott replied with an equally loud voice, and then shook her head for more clarity.

“Come on. Ask your questions”, she urged them after bringing sugar and milk from the kitchen and sinking into the couch with a sigh. She’d firmly refused Grace’s help, and, from the look she’d thrown him when he’d held the door open for her, John suspected she deemed him far too reckless to hold tea trays.

“We were wondering if you could tell us something about a former tenant of yours”, Grace said.

“From back in Hartford, you mean?” Grace nodded. “I had lots of tenants in those years, sweetheart. Who is it you’re interested in?”

“Harold Wren.”

Mr. Scott seemed to wake up at the mention of Harold’s name. “Wren?” he almost shouted. “Why are we talking about him?”

“He wa- he’s my ex-fiancé”, Grace explained, enouncing the words.

Mr. Scott clearly wasn’t fond of euphemisms. “‘Ex’, eh? The little louse gave you the slip at the altar?” He grinned a toothless grin. He smelt strongly of damp clothes. “He’s always been a coward.”

“Oh, come on”, Ms. Scott cried out disapprovingly, lowering her tone when she realized her brother had dozed off again. “Harold wasn’t a coward”, she told Grace, who looked slightly shaken. “He was dead scared.”

“Why was that?” John asked.

Ms. Scott clicked her tongue. “Well, it was no business of mine, was it?”she reminded him disapprovingly. “I never asked him. Of course he would confide in me once in a while. We used to be pretty close, at least before he got too engrossed in that awful girl to give me heed anymore.” She scowled at the thought. “She put strange ideas in his head.” She fell silent, seeming to have lost the thread of the conversation.

“Did Harold ever tell you what exactly he was scared of?” Grace prompted gently.

“He didn’t just tell me. I saw him.” All of a sudden, the woman looked genuinely scared.

“You saw whom?” John insisted.

“That – that boy Liam. Harold had told me they’d been schoolmates back in Cambridge – where he’d studied, I mean. He’d got brains, Harold, oh yes sir.”

“And did he explain why he was so scared of this Liam?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I saw the boy”, she repeated, as if that settled the question. “Harold just told me there had been some trouble with a girl at college, and I didn’t insist. He was such a good-mannered boy, I didn’t think for a moment he could have been in the wrong.” Her expression softened.”Anyway, I was drying the laundry one day – it was winter, so I’d pulled the rack inside – and this kid comes knocking at my door, asking about Harold, telling me they were old friends and all that, but no sir, I didn’t buy it. I could see it in his eyes.” She hit the armrest with her hand to intensify her statement. “Something evil.”

#

They thanked Ms. Scott for the tea, promised they would talk Harold into writing to her as soon as they saw him and yelled they goodbyes to Mr. Scott, who merely glanced up before resuming his grumbling about late nurses and sore teeth.

“Young man”, Ms. Scott called after him as they were heading downstairs. He turned around and waited on the landing, hoping her reprimand, whatever it was about, wouldn’t last long.

“She’s a nice girl”, the woman said softly, gesturing towards the stairs. Grace had already descended the first flight of steps, and was out of earshot. “You’d better take care of her.” John nodded docilely and went after Grace, wondering what exactly the woman had meant.

He found her sitting on the doorstep, her hands in her lap, gazing at the street. “Everything all right?” he asked, sitting beside her. He was still pondering Ms. Scott’s words.

She didn’t reply, but covered her face with one hand and started sobbing, quietly. He put a tentative arm around her shoulders and she leant against him, resting her head on his chest. John’s mind went back to Harold’s shoulders shaking under his hands, his ragged breathing slowly steadying. There was something subtle, something deep and intimate which connected this woman and this man, a thread tying together her sobbing and his tears, his trembling and her tears.

“Better now?” he asked as she eventually pulled away. She nodded and then shook her head, a weak smile on her lips. “I’m fine”, she said, “it’s just a little too much, you know?”

John knew.

Grace averted her eyes from the traffic to look at him. “Harold’s not a coward”, she said firmly, and suddenly John saw it, Grace and Harold’s stubborn generosity, their utter incomprehension of cruelty and harm, the helpless, naked fear they shared. He wondered how hard, how scary carrying on must be for people such as these, to whom life had taught no malice, if not an accidental one.

“No”, he said, “he’s not.”

#

John dialed Carter’s number and activated the speakerphone after they’d gotten into the car.

“John? Are you all right?” Carter asked in lieu of a greeting.

“Never better”, he replied in slight exasperation. Who did she think she was talking to, a widower in the middle of the mourning process? “I need a favor.”

“NYPD’s at your service”, she retaliated wryly. Grace threw John an interrogative look from the passenger seat. “What do you need?”

“Could you look into the old MIT records for me?” he asked. “I’m looking for a boy named Liam who attended there between 1976 and 1981.”

“Liam? That all you got?”

“That’s all I got.”

Carter paused. “I’ll see what I can do. How’s your leg?”

“Recovering.” John hadn’t thought about the wound since leaving Hartford.

A longer pause. John could hear the hubbub of the Eight Precinct in the background. “All right. Good luck, John.”

#

Low purple clouds were gathering above Boston as they entered the city. They’d exchanged anecdotes about their travels along the way. Grace had told him of her junior year in Venice, of Rome, of Germany and Thailand; John had looked at the rows of pine trees stretching on both their sides as they drove through Berkeley State Forest and had revived relatively happy memories about his four months in Moscow. Grace’s lips had thinned when he’d showed her the jagged scar on his wrist, a souvenir of a stakeout which had ended the wrong way. He remembered the long, dark streaks of mud and blood steaming in the icy snow.

They parked in the suburbs of Boston and sat on a small wall, drinking iced tea from a thermos Grace had pulled out from her bag, still laughing about low-cost flights and incongruous train delays. None of them mentioned MIT, Harold, or the mysterious Liam, although John knew Grace knew he was waiting for Carter’s call.

They’d been silent for a while when a phone rang – but it wasn’t John’s cell. He raised his head, staring at the payphone which kept ringing and ringing at the opposite side of the desert road.

“Should we answer?” Grace asked dubiously.

John stood up, crossed the road and lifted up the receiver. The line was silent. Grace, who’d followed him, raised her eyebrows in a silent question. John shrugged, frowning, but something caught his eye as he was hanging up.

A nervous-looking man was standing in the shade of a nearby house, his back against the side wall. Something in John’s instinct clicked: there was a gun tucked into the man’s waistband.

A plump flustered woman in her early forties was hurrying down the pavement, a hand instinctively clutching her leather bag. Her right arm was in a sling.

The hiding man straightened up and reached for his gun at the clicking of her heels on the tarmac, but he never took it out. John sprang towards him and pinned him against the wooden wall, pressing his forearm against the man’s throat until he collapsed, hitting John’s injured leg as he fell. John swore aloud.

“What – what happened?” the woman stammered, eyeing John from the pavement as if she feared he would lunge at her throat if she dared to come a nearer. Grace was standing beside her, her eyes wide.

John nodded towards the man. “He had a gun”, he explained curtly. Apparently, the Machine had decided to assign him some holiday homework. “Do you know him?”

The woman shook her head. “N-no”, she whimpered, and the burst into tears, burying her face into Grace’s shoulder. “No, b-but it wasn’t the f-first t-time they tried to m-mug me.” Grace patted lightly on her elbow.

“I’m Elizabeth. Elizabeth Oakley”, the woman said after a while, wiping her eyes. “You saved my life”, she added dramatically, addressing John, who made a noncommittal sound. “You’ve got to come over for dinner”, Mrs. Oakley insisted. John opened his mouth to decline, but Grace anticipated him. “That would be lovely”, she said soothingly.

“She looks so lonely”, she whispered apologetically to John as they followed Mrs. Oakley to her doorstep. “Besides, I’d rather avoid diners for a while.” John kept silent.

Mrs. Oakley’s house looked strangely uninhabited. John examined his surroundings as she let them into the small living room: there were no photo frames on the shelves, no signs of ash in the black ashtray, no pens in the wooden penholder, no slippers on the floor by the bedroom door. He glanced into a half-open storage closet: it was empty.

“My husband should be here at any moment”, Mrs. Oakley explained, gesturing to a pair of plastic chairs by the window. The sky outside was turning livid; the temperature had dropped. “It’s his last day at work, you know. We’re going on vacation tomorrow.”

“What are you planning to do?” Grace enquired politely.

“Oh, it’s just a couple of weeks to the seaside”, the woman said, sounding less than thrilled by the prospect. “We’re stopping by at Hamilton for a few days, there’s an old friend of my husband’s he wants me to meet.”

“What does your husband do?” Grace asked. John’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. “Excuse me”, he said, standing up, and walked to the other end of the room to answer.

“Carter?”

“It’s me. How’s you scavenger hunt going?”

“I’m having a great time, Lionel. Wanna join in?”

Fusco snorted. “No thanks. I’m calling you about those MIT records you asked Carter to look into.”

“I’m listening.”

“You asked about a boy named Liam who attended there between ’76 and ’81. Thing is, there were about fifty of them.”

John’s heart sank.

“You went to Rhode Island School of Design in Providence?” he heard Mrs. Oakley ask in surprise. “Me too!”

“Thanks all the same, Lionel”, he muttered. They were stuck.

“Really?” Grace exclaimed. “We could have met there! What was your maiden name?”

“Hey, wait before you thank me”, Fusco said. “There’s something I didn’t tell you.”

Go on”, John prompted.

“One of the fifty Liams in those records was none less than your fugitive kidnapper, that William ‘Osborne’. I told you his real name had somethin’ to do with trees, remember?”

John froze.

“Lindal? I can’t remember any Lindal”, he heard Grace murmur thoughtfully. “Maybe we attended different classes.”

All of a sudden, John remembered telling Finch about Lindal’s text message to his brother-in-law: just small talk about some new football player of the Boston Patriots. His mind raced. I've always tried to talk Libby into leaving the damn man, Lindal muttered uneasily in his ear.

Fusco’s voice made him start. “Hey, you still there?”

He hung up and strode towards the table, placing a hand on Grace’s shoulder. “We’ve got to go”, he said, but Mrs. Oakley had already disappeared into the hallway to let her husband in.

“Oh, come on, Liam, they saved me from that mugger, I thought the least I could do was-”

“Well well well”, William Oakley said in a sleepy voice, stepping into the living room. “Look who’s come over for dinner.”

#

It all happened in a blur.

John took out his gun and fired, Grace and Elizabeth screamed in terror, Oakley fell to the ground, something sharp and scorching hot slashed John’s right side.

He stumbled backwards, steadying himself onto the table. He glanced down: hot blood was seeping through his shirt, staining the white fabric, but he could tell it was just a scratch. Oakley’s bullet had missed him.

Oakley himself hadn’t been as lucky.

He was writhing and groaning, a hand convulsively clutching his upper thigh. Dark blood was spreading on the wooden floor beneath his leg.

“Now we’re even”, John half-whispered, limping towards the man. Elizabeth whimpered and stepped backwards, watching her husband with a mixture of pity and revulsion in her eyes. Grace was still sitting on the plastic chair by the window, petrified.

John stifled a groan as he crouched down to disarm Oakley. He brushed the barrel of his gun against the man’s shaking hip. “Now you’ll explain”, he told him, “or I will hurt you.”

The man yelped, coughed and burst into a throaty, ragged laugh.

“You got me, Johnny boy”, he spat, “you got me.”

John slid the gun down from Oakley’s hip to his upper thigh, stopping right above the hole his bullet had torn. “Tell me why”, he said in a low voice. Oakley gasped and shuddered, still laughing. Tears were streaming down his face.

“Tell me why!” John yelled, shoving the barrel into Oakley’s wound. The man let out an agonizing scream, scratching the floor with his nails.

“John!” Grace shouted, pulling him back. Elizabeth Oakley was crying desperately.

“He beat his wife”, John growled, breathing heavily, trying to pull himself free from Grace’s encircling arms. She was shaking. “He broke her arm”, he sobbed, “he’s insane… You’re insane!” Oakley was lying limply on the floor, gasping for air. “You’re insane. You scared an innocent man to death because he screwed your fucking girlfriendat college!”

Oakley’s mouth twisted as Grace helped John up and gently ushered him towards the door. “Is that what he told you?” he called after them. “Is that what he told you?”

#

“Come on, don’t be silly. Let me see.”

John shoved Grace’s hand away. Following his instructions, she’d dialed 911 and driven them into an abandoned field a few kilometers away. A fox was peering at them from behind a pile of tinplate scraps.

“I’m fine”, he muttered.

She threw him a long-suffering look. The setting sun was reflecting from the rearview mirror into her eyes. “You’re not.”

He grunted, but let her take his shirt off and disinfect the wound.

“That’s a good boy”, Grace said mockingly. “You’ll be better soon.” Her voice was light, but fear was still lingering around her eyes. John wished he could reach out and take it away.

“I didn’t know you were a doctor”, he teased in a similar tone, trying to ease the tension.

“I’m not”, she agreed, and then they kissed, desperate and tender, John leaning forward to cup Grace’s face in his hand. She tasted like blueberries and iced tea.

Her eyes were dark when they broke the kiss, short of breath. She bit her lip, brushing her fingers against John’s bare upper arm.

“You’re in love with him, aren’t you?” she asked softly.

“Yes”, he realized.

She nodded, reaching up to trail her lips over the side of John’s neck. “But you’re not gay, right?” she breathed, sliding a hand to his crotch.

John swallowed. He was already half-hard.

“Apparently not”, she smiled against his skin. “Do you think Harold would mind if I borrowed you for one night?” she went on, reaching down to undo his fly.

“Probably”, John managed to exhale. He let out a low moan when she freed his cock from his suddenly too tight briefs.

She looked up at him. “Then let’s do this.”

#

John woke up to the pale light of the rising sun filtering through the dirty window. It must have been raining. He took in his surroundings, memories of the previous day surfacing slowly to his mind. Mr. McMurphy’s office, the ladies’ room in the shabby diner, eighteen-year-old Sylvaine Morley-Jones’s tiny breasts, the smell of overcooked food in the Scotts’ apartment, the amateur mugger in Mattapan, Fusco’s call. He glanced down, bringing a hand to his side.

Grace was breathing heavily, her head in his lap, shivering slightly in her light pile blanket. He ran a hand into her auburn hair, fear and worry sliding off him like dirt under clean water. She opened her eyes and blinked up at him, smiling her wholehearted smile.

“Where are we going today?” she asked, her voice husky with sleepiness.

John smiled back, reluctant to move. “Hamilton.” There’s an old friend of my husband’s he wants me to meet, Elizabeth Oakley had said.

Grace stretched her arms. “Great. I’m driving.”

#

Hamilton reminded John of a small town in the north of Bretagne which had once served him as a hideout: rows upon winding rows of identical semi-detached houses, stretching from the town center like tentacles from an octopus’s head.

Remembering Grace’s misadventure at the diner in Hartford, John made her pull over in South Hamilton and limped into a small grocery store to get their breakfast. The nose-pierced, dark-haired, gum-chewing girl behind the till threw him a bemused look when he handed her a box of donuts – for Grace – and a pair of hot-dogs – for him.

“Early breakfast?” she asked. It was half past six in the morning.

“More like a very late dinner”, John replied placidly, giving her the six dollars fifty.

She looked at him appraisingly as she ripped the receipt from the till and stuffed it into his paper bag. Etta Andrews – Crosby Market, John read on a small label on her bright red apron.

“Hey, d’you know any Dutch?” she asked abruptly.

John stared at her. “I... Why?”

Etta tilted her head. “Just asking. You strike me as the traveling type. D’you know Dutch or don’t you?”

“Yeah, a little bit”, John admitted.

Etta brightened up. “Awesome! You couldn’t, like, write down a few words for me? If you’re not in a hurry”, she added, as if remembering she was talking to a client.

The shop doorbell tinkled as Grace entered the shop. John raised his eyebrows at her, shrugging.

“All right”, he said. “Which words do you need?”

“Dog commands, basically. You know, ‘run’, ‘stay’, ‘sit down’, bring it back’…” Etta handed him a yellow post-it and a pen.

“You’ve got a military trained dog?” John asked curiously.

Etta looked delighted. “So you are a soldier! I was wondering. Anyway, no, d’you think I could afford one of those army dogs?” she laughed. “It’s for my younger brother, he’s, like, completely nuts with this warfare thing. He was here last night, gibbering about it with clients, and this funny guy told him something about a Belgian Malinois he used to have who only obeyed Dutch commands, so now Ed’s set his mind on teaching ourcocker spaniel Dutch. He’s only eight, you know”, she explained, misinterpreting John’s flabbergasted expression.

 “Could you describe him?” he asked.

Etta frowned at him. “Who, my brother?”

“No, I mean, the – the funny guy?”

“Oh”, Etta glanced at the ceiling in concentration. “He had a really smart suit. Wore glasses. Walked with a limp.” She chewed her gum thoughtfully. “He looked like a nice guy. Weird, but nice.”

Grace met John’s eyes.

“Do you know where he lives?” she asked.

“Why would I?” Etta retaliated warily. “I’d never seen him before. Heard he moved here a couple of days ago”, she said, and then realized her error.

“Any chance you heard also where he moved?” John insisted, struggling to keep his tone unthreatening. After all, the girl was just being sensible.

Etta bit her lip, unresolved. “Why exactly d’you wanna know?”

“He’s a friend of ours”, John began, but Grace placed a hand on his arm and said, “We can tell her, John.” Both he and Etta looked at her interrogatively.

“I don’t know why he’s always so embarrassed about it”, Grace told the girl with an airy smile. “Harry’s our boyfriend. We should’ve caught up with him yesterday, but our car broke down, and there must be some problem with his phone, because he’s not returning our calls. We’re a little worried.”

Etta glanced from Grace to John, blushing. “Ooh, really?” she chirped. “You could’ve told me, you know”, she added, addressing John. “Your boyfriend’s house is not far. Just a little further down the road.”

#

John’ stomach fluttered in apprehension as they walked down Walnut Road.

“Did you really call him ‘Harry’?” he asked to break the silence.

Grace smiled weakly. John noticed she’d turned rather pale. “When I wanted to drive him mad”, she replied in a low voice, and then said, “We’re here.”

#

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure. You go see if he’s home, I- I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

John raised a hand to cup Grace’s cheek, thought better than it.

“All right”, he sighed, turned around, walked to the door, knocked twice and waited. After a few seconds, the door creaked open.

For a long moment, they stood on the threshold in silence, looking at each other.

“Fair enough”, Harold said eventually, giving one sharp nod, and stepped aside to let John in.

#

“Sorry for waking you up”, John muttered as Harold led the way into a dimly-lit hallway.

Harold glanced down at his burgundy nightgown, mildly surprised. “Oh… I wasn’t sleeping.” They walked into a modest but cozy living room. There was a heap of envelopes on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, a half-empty suitcase on one of the leather armchairs, a small laptop on top of it, partially visible beneath the neatly folded undershirts. It was beeping softly, but Harold didn’t seem to notice. John wondered idly whether he’d already arranged the rest of the library hardware.

“I should have a bottle of Brut somewhere in the cupboard, but I daresay alcohol is altogether ill-suited, time and circumstances considered”, Harold said, wiping his glasses with the rim of his sleeve. “Would you like some coffee? For my part, I could do with a cup of tea.”

John thought of the bag of hot dogs and donuts which at the moment was lying unheeded on the back seat of his car. His stomach growled.

“You got something to eat?” he asked, sitting on the empty armchair.

Harold quirked a smile. “There’s plenty of chocolate cookies left from yesterday evening”, he said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

“Since when can you bake?” John asked fatuously when Harold came back, holding a tray full of what looked like homemade cookies.

“I’m afraid my culinary ambitions don’t stretch any further than this recipe”, Harold replied. “Abbie used to make them for me”, he explained with a touch of nostalgia. It took John a few seconds to realize he was talking about Ms. Scott. “I’m biased, of course, but sometimes I think I might even have gotten better than her.”

John picked up a cookie, took a bite.

“How’s Bear?” Harold inquired politely after what he probably deemed to be a reasonable amount of silence. John couldn’t help but smile as he felt the conversation slide back into their usual game of ‘I-won’t-say-if-you-don’t-say’, their careful pattern of meaningless small talk and understatements.

“With Leon. I found the pen case”, he added, answering the question Harold hadn’t asked.

Of course”, Harold waved his hand, almost irritably, “but how-”

He paused, glanced at the beeping laptop, turned rather pale. “Oh”, he said, and it could have been an exclamation of pure anger, of relief, of dread.

John kept silent.

“Did you-”

“I just told her you were alive”, John replied. “Will you forgive me?” he didn’t ask.

“Where…?”

The doorbell rang.

“Here”, John said softly, and walked away.

#

He sat in the surprisingly wide backyard and waited. He waited, and waited, until the dewy grass had turned from wet to damp, the sky from pearl white to slate gray. A crow was cawing and hopping in the neighbor’s yard; someone started mowing his lawn in the distance.

John sat and waited and remembered his and Harold’s first time together. The decreasing level of Chateau Lafite in the bottle, Harold’s unprecedented loquaciousness, his tentative tongue into John’s mouth. John had spent that night and the few weeks that had followed it in a state of stunned, unquestioning joy. He hadn’t asked: he’d been too busy kissing and touching and breathing, drinking Harold’s sleepy voice, waiting for the sound of his uneven tread, holding onto the smell of his skin in the night under clean sheets.

He thought of the wake of bewildered regret Harold had left behind him, like a trail for him and Grace to follow, and wondered. What if he’d fallen in love with a man too scared of himself to let anyone near him? What if Harold really was a coward, a man long since accustomed to flight, ready to discard people as soon as the pleasure of companionship had turned into a threat of commitment?

John sat and waited and wondered, and above everything else he heard William Oakley’s hoarse voice in his ears, rasping and panting, is that what he told you? Is that what he told you?

#

John had lost count of the hours by the time Harold stepped through the frosted glass door into the backyard and hobbled towards him. John felt vaguely ashamed of himself when he realized he’d actually missed Harold’s unsteady gait.

A thunder rolled in the distance as Harold sat beside him. John kept staring at the vinyl fencing in front of him; he caught a weak smile on Harold’s face with the corner of his eye.

Another thunder; a hesitant hand on his forearm. John drew back brusquely, more by force of instinct than to make any actual point. He couldn’t change what Harold was going tell him; he knew he’d rendered himself expendable from the moment he’d knocked on Grace’s door in Washington Square.

“John”, Harold said, a pleading note in his voice. It looked to John like ‘Finch’ and ‘Mr. Reese’ belonged to years and years before.

His guts twisted as he decided he would do this for Harold; he would spare him the cruelty and chagrin of leaving, for a change.

“I’m heading back as soon as it stops raining”, he said in a neutral tone. No storm had started yet, but the air was crackling with electricity. “Just…” He suddenly thought he wouldn’t get to say goodbye to Grace. Perhaps for the best. “Just, please. Explain.”

“John”, Harold repeated softly, frowning. The hand he’d placed on John’s arm was now resting lightly on the slat backrest. “Did you enjoy your teenage years?” he asked eventually.

John’s mind went back to the smell of mold and burnt wood on Bradley Lake, the crisp evening air on Stewart Avenue. “I guess”, he said.

“Well, I didn’t. I was lonely”, Harold replied succinctly. “I was distant. I just couldn’t manage to feel involved with people around me; I couldn’t getto them, no matter how hard I tried. There was Nathan, of course, but he was so participating, so into things, I often felt all the more estranged beside him.”

Harold paused. A cool breeze rose, sending a shiver down John’s spine.

“I used to drink heavily at college”, Harold said flatly. “Oh yes”, he added in response to John’s raised eyebrows. “Regrettably, I did. Cheesy as it may sound, getting wasted was the most accessible way I knew of feeling ‘alive’ as other people meant it. I wouldn’t be detached. I wouldn’t be alienated anymore.”

John shifted uneasily in his seat. The idea of Harold so young and so forlorn made his stomach clench.

“There’s nothing romantic in self-harm, you know”, Harold went on, even though he knew John knew. After all, it hadn’t been all that time since he’d staggered into A&Ps in the small hours of the morning, looking for the cheapest alcohol deal.

“I can’t remember what I had to drink on the night of our graduation party”, Harold murmured, and, for the first time, his voice trembled. “I would never have thrown a graduation party in the first place, hadn’t it been for Nathan. He made the invitations, he found the venue, he ‘bought libations’, as he would put it.” Harold shook his head, affection and resentment blending in his tone. “For the most part, I didn’t object. And people came –they were there for Nathan, of course; my presence was, you might say, an accessory attraction, my graduation being somewhat renowned for its distinction.”

Another pause. A light drizzle started coming down from the clouding sky, but Harold didn’t stir. Neither did John.

“There was-” Harold’s voice faltered. “There was a girl. She was younger than us and she didn’t – she didn’t know anyone at the party. Nathan had invited her because she was new to Cambridge – her family had moved from Rhode Island in the winter –, and because she was, well, reasonably attractive. ” Harold let out a ragged sigh. John felt slightly sick in anticipation of he didn’t quite know what.

“He dared me to go to her and kiss her, and I – I did, I was drunk, I didn’t really care. She was shy and unpleasant. She was drunk as well.” Another thunder, closer this time. “She asked me to drive her home, so we got into my car and I pulled out, without the faintest idea about where I was going. After a while, she told me to stop, so I pulled over and she took my hand and practically dragged me into Riverbend Park. We kissed a little more, but I was tired, and she got annoyed. She told me I was cold and boring, and I told her she could go and screw Nathan instead if she liked.” John cringed inwardly at the harshness in Harold’s voice. “So she left my hand, and she walked towards the river, up to the pedestrian bridge, and she-” Harold buried his face in his hands, suddenly shaking. “And she fell-”

Silence stretched between them. Harold was sobbing; John couldn’t bring himself to touch him. He was too horrified to speak.

“The following days were a real nightmare”, Harold whispered eventually. “They – found her, and all of us were interviewed by the police. They suspected I’d been involved – some people from the party remembered seeing us in my car, and many of them had heard Nathan’s dare – but they never had enough evidence to incriminate me. The inquiry stopped. Her family went back to Rhode Island.” Harold closed his eyes: he looked exhausted. “I remember walking by their house a few days before they left. A boy came out of their driveway and walked towards me. He must have been thirteen or fourteen; he looked younger. He told me something like, ‘you killed my sister, and I’ll kill you’, turned around and walked away.” Harold looked up at John. “His name was William. William Oakley”, he said, and suddenly it clicked: Harold just told me there had been some trouble with a girl, Ms. Scott had said. Is that what he told you?, the writhing man on the floor had cried.

Harold hadn’t slept with Oakley’s girlfriend at college. He’d killed – no, John corrected himself, he’d accidentally witnessed his sister’s death.

“I left for Hartford as soon as I could”, Harold went on. “Modesty aside, I knew I wouldn’t have any problem in finding a job anywhere I needed it, and an insurance company was as good a place as any other. Abbie Scott was very kind to me; her brother was bearable most of the time. And then I met Syl, and she was so beautiful, so helpless, so unexpected…” Harold’s voice trailed off. “But a year later I had to leave”, he said, his tone hardening. “Nathan contacted me, I caught up with him in New York, we founded IFT together. A new life”, he smiled wryly. “You know the rest.”

“I still don’t know why you left me”, John would have liked to say, but it didn’t really matter. He knew enough.

Harold studied him. “When – when William took me in New York, I was terrified. Not by him – not anymore, at least.” He glanced at the sky. The rain had stopped. “I realized you were going to learn the truth about me, about my past.” He shook his head. “And as much as I needed you to know, I just – I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”

John gaped at him, lost for words, and then he cracked a smile. “You could have written a letter, you know”, he said hoarsely, the tight knot in his throat finally dissolving.

Harold smiled meekly in turn. “Can you forgive me?” he asked, but John placed a finger on his lips and kissed him, too overwhelmed to speak, tears stinging at the corners of his eyes.

“I’m so glad you came after me”, Harold murmured, John’s arms around him. “I love you, John.”

“I love you too”, John sighed, and Harold‘s breathing was warm against his chest, and John wasn’t afraid anymore.

The back door creaked open; there were light footsteps behind them, a cool hand on John’s shoulder.

“Why don’t the two of you come to bed?” Grace suggested, and they followed her inside.

#

They followed her through the living room to Harold’s bedroom, blinking in the half-darkness of the house after the metallic light outside. The sky was rumbling and rolling again.

Grace turned around on the threshold, holding out her hand to John. He closed the distance between them in two strides and kissed her, thankful. She wrapped her arms around his neck, drawing him closer, groaning softly into his mouth.

Harold was behind him, a hand placed lightly on his hip, right above the gauze protecting his wound. He pulled away reluctantly, stepping aside.

Harold and Grace stood there for a long moment, just looking at each other. She was smiling. He flashed his quick, slightly melancholy smile before leaning down a little to plant soft kisses on both her eyes, the side of her neck, the hollow of her shoulder. Grace seemed to melt in his hands. It looked to John like Harold had reached a level of confidence and intimacy he’d never witnessed before. His cock hardened in his briefs.

Harold’s finger slid down Grace’s shoulder blades, stopped at the hem of her blouse.

“May I?” he asked.

“What do you think?” Grace replied, heavy-lidded.

Harold took her blouse off and started unbuttoning his own shirt, glancing at John. It was all the prompting John needed. He walked to Grace’s back, undoing her brown embroidered bra. She shivered under his touch.

They brought her to the bed, John’s lips lingering over her breasts, Harold’s fingers intertwined with his above her navel. John sat on the edge of the bed and laboriously started unbuckling his belt, his fingers slightly shaky.

“Let me”, Harold said, and knelt between John’s knees to help him.

John’s cock twitched as Harold’s mouth closed around it, his tongue sweeping around the head before sliding down the shaft, warm and hard. Grace was watching them, her eyes dark. John moaned. Harold went from licking to sucking, his lips clenching around John’s cock, his hand steadying it at the base. He let out a trembling breath with his nose when John curled one hand into his hair, the other one gripping the edge of the mattress.

“Yes”, he exhaled as he came, his hips thrusting into Harold’s mouth, a satisfied look in Harold’s eyes as he looked up to him, swallowing.

“That was for compensation”, he said after he’d sat back, wiping his mouth. John laughed breathlessly. He felt reconciled to the world.

Harold took his trousers off and climbed into bed in his underpants.

“What are you planning to do with these on?” Grace teased him when he reached her, tugging lightly at his waistband. Her jeans were lying on the floor on the opposite side of the bed. Harold kissed her and smiled against her mouth as she arched her hips to let him slide her panties off, contemporarily disposing of Harold’s briefs with her hands. John thought he could probably get off on just watching them.

Grace leant her back against the wooden headboard as Harold spread her thighs, brushing his knuckles lightly against her clit.

“I’m sorry”, he murmured, and she just nodded, her head tilted back. He slid a finger between her slick labia and into her, slowly working his way back and forth. She grabbed his wrist, her hips rocking slightly. “More”, she breathed, and Harold added a finger, his tongue trailing over her breastbone to the hollow of her throat. John instinctively brought a hand to his throbbing cock as she let out a loud moan and shuddered all over, her knuckles white against the bedspread.

“Condom”, she said after a while, sitting up. “Bathroom”, Harold replied, and climbed over the bed to a small door. Grace’s eyes lingered on the interlacing scars which went from the back of Harold’s neck to the small of his back.

She glanced over at John, who was still sitting on the edge of the bed, idly stroking himself.

“No need to do that on your own”, she said as Harold came back with a strip of condoms. Harold smiled at him. “Come here, John.” John crawled towards them, his vision somewhat blurred, his ears humming in the excitement of anticipation.

Harold rolled a condom onto his cock; John had to restrain himself from thrusting into his hand.  “Youth”, Harold chuckled indulgently. He was ripping open a second packet when John grabbed his wrist. “Wait”, he said huskily, curling a hand at the base of Harold’s cock.

“Ah”, Harold vocalized when John leant down to swallow him whole. He was too aroused to linger on technicalities; Harold didn’t seem to mind.

“Ah”, he repeated as John sucked him rhythmically, one hand cupping his balls, his tongue flicking at the underside of his cock’s head every time he came up. John caught a glimpse of Grace idly fingering herself, her back against a pillow. He made a small throaty noise, his lips involuntarily clenching. “John”, Harold gasped, steadying himself against the mattress with both hands, his thighs shuddering under John’s shoulders, and John suckled and swallowed, his eyes stinging with breathlessness and gratitude.

He sat up again and turned towards Grace while Harold rolled his condom on, still panting. He knew what he’d had in mind.

“Have you ever done this?” he asked her.

“Nope”, she said with a smile, leaning forward to give his nipple a playful bite, then she addressed Harold. “Do you need a minute?” she asked.

Harold shook his head. “Most definitely not”, he said, and moved towards them.

“Good”, she said. “Then lie down.”

Harold complied, his eyes fixed on her, and she slid down on him with a soft whimper. Harold’s eyelids fluttered. “John”, she exhaled, and he realized he’d been gaping at them, his cock achingly hard. He shook himself from his daze and settled between Harold’s thighs. He pressed his cock against the small of Grace’s back as she slid up and down again. Grace turned her head to kiss him as he slid one, two fingers into her ass, working her open slowly. She bit his lower lip with a low moan.

“Ready?” he asked. She’d better be. He was too damn close.

“Ready”, she said, letting him settle the head of his cock next to Harold’s shaft.

“Oh God”, she breathed as she slid down on both of them, adjusting the angle. John could feel Harold’s cock against his through layers of muscle tissue. He swallowed. “Oh God”, Grace repeated, increasing the rhythm. Harold groaned, holding onto her upper thigh with one hand for support. John placed his hand over Harold’s, their fingers intertwining again, Harold’s nails digging into his palm. “Fuck!” John cried out, and both Grace and Harold shuddered against him as he came, his throat making incoherent sounds, his head spinning.

They lay together on the king-size bed afterwards, Harold in the middle, their hearts slowing down.

“Shall we go back home?” John asked after a while, looking at the ceiling.

“I guess so”, Harold said, his wrist brushing against John’s wrist.

“It’s raining again”, Grace said, and they fell silent.


End file.
